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Friday, February 11, 2011

Hanging Valentine Tutorial

I had seen a similar hanging Valentine cone last week, and knew I had to make a set of these for my kids. I found some coordinating fabrics that I loved, and this is what I ended up with. They were fairly simple and quick to put together. I love them!

Directions:
1) Cut two squares of fabric into equal squares. One square will be used for the outside of your hanging Valentine cone, and the other the inside. I used my ruler, shown below, that measures 16 1/2".

2) Fold one of your squares in half along the diagonal, leaving you with a triangle.

3) Cut a triangle of fabric from your folded square to make a smaller triangle. See my image below. I lined my fold up with the 30 degree angle line on my ruler, and cut off the extra. This does not need to be exact. The more you cut off here, the narrower your finished cone will be. The less... the wider (and more it can hold). If you open up the fabric, it will now look like a kite.

4) Use the fabric cut in the previous step as a template for cutting your second square of fabric and fusible webbing. You will also need to cut batting with this template, however, you will see in the photo below that I opted only to cut batting for the lower portion of the "kite". (You may chose to omit the batting all-together)

Note - Don't be alarmed! You will see that my batting has some pink zig zag stitches across it. I was using scraps I had on hand, and had to piece them together to get the size I needed. Just ignore them :)

5) Iron your fusible webbing onto the backside of the fabric "kite" that you would like to have on the outside of your hanging Valentine.

6) With right sides together, match your two pieces of fabric and pin the top half of your "kite" together.

7) Sew along the top two side's of your "kite", where you pinned. I used a 1/4" seam allowance.

8) Trim the extra fabric around your point so you get a nice point when you turn the fabric right-side out.

9) How I do it... though not a necessary step here (as you can do it in a later step)... I turned my fabric right-side out so I could get my point nice and neat.

10) Turning your right sides back together (and if you followed Step 9, go ahead and keep your right-sided point in place), match your fabrics up as shown in the image below. You will see the seam just sewed in Step 7 holding the fabrics together in the middle. On the right side, you see the liner/inside fabric. On the left, you see the outer fabric with the fusible webbing.

11) In the image above, notice that I have added my batting, lining it up with the outer fabric. Pin right sides together as shown in the image.

12) Sew about a 1/2" seam allowance where you pinned in Step 11.

**IMPORTANT** Make sure you leave about 6" at the end of the inside, lining fabric so that you can turn the fabric right-side out. It is hard to notice in the image below, but you may be able to see on the right end of the purple fabric where the stitching ends.

13) Trim the extra fabric from the points on both ends, as shown below.

14) Turn your fabric right-side out. Use something pointy, such as a pencil, to help you turn out your points.

15) I found that I needed to pin my batting to the outer fabric to hold it in place before the next step. I did so on each side, as you see below.

16) Turn in the raw edges of your opening in your inner/liner fabric and pin closed. Don't worry if you have a hard time with the tip. No one will see it ;)

17) Sew your opening closed. You could hand sew this closed, but again.. no one will see it, so I chose to do what was easiest!

18) Take your inner/lining fabric and turn it into the center of your outer fabric. If you chose to use batting, be careful you don't bunch the batting up in the process... or get poked by the pins you may have used to hold the batting in place.

19) Take special care to make a nice opening by working the fabric at the seam. You may want to pin the opening here as you do so. That was too much work for me, so I chose not to. ha ha...

20) Sew a seam along the opening to finish it off. I would recommend a seam 1/4" or less. Mine was likely about 1/16" here.

21) You can now turn down the top of your cone. We are almost done!! Tate thinks it makes a pretty cool hat at this point.

22) Cut a strip of fabric, about 2 1/2" x 22" to be used for the handle. I chose to use the same inner/lining fabric.

23) Fold the strip in half along the length, right-sides together, and stitch a 1/4" seam.

27) IF YOU CHOOSE, sew a seam along each side of your handle. This is not necessary, but might give it a finished look you like. It is up to you!

28) Fold your handle in half, so that the raw edges of your ends are facing each other. Then, pinch the opposite end together.

29) Sew the middle of the strap you were just pinching, at a 1/4" or slightly more.

30) We are going to turn this into a heart! Take your handle and make a heart shape from the seam you just sewed, like below. Decide where you would like to close your heart, and sew your next seam.

31) Next, we need to find the placement for your handle. Fold the cone from the back seam, and mark the front point with a pin (as in the image on the left). Next, match the back seam with the pin placed at the front point. You can then mark the right and left sides with pins (as in the image on the right).

32) Pin your handle in place, matching it to the center of the pins you placed on the right and left side of the cone. Make sure the raw edge of your handle's end (which was turned under in Step 26) is against the cone and not showing.

33) Stitch your handles in place. Make sure you make this stitching fairly secure to hold the weight of your filled Valentine cone.

34) Your hanging Valentine is now ready to be embellished! I chose to cut a heart out of felt and embroider mine. Sew cute!!

These are so fun! And the photo of the cone as a hat made me laugh. I learned to sew by watching (with my eyes probably way to close to the sewing machine) my mother sew so that photo was too cute to me. Love the contrasting material and the little heart in the handle. Cuteness. Thanks for linking this to The Valentines Party.

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Welcome!

Hi! I'm Rachel. I am thrilled to have you here. I am a crafty mom with a passion for teaching. You will find lots of inspiration on these pages, so give the kids a coloring book and take a look around!